Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ adapted into video game

Game creator Gordon Calleja presents Will Love Tear Us Apart?, a free-to-play browser-game about “relationships on the brink of breaking up.” The game is an experiment in adapting a song — in this case Joy Division classic ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ — into a video game; Calleja visualized each verse as a game level, “rendered in his mind’s eye as Dürer woodcuts.”

From that impetus, the game focuses on “mis-communication, emotional impasse and the sadness of separation… Solace may be found in the brief moment of lightness that comes over us when we come to terms with the reality of an irreconcilable relationship.” The initial design was developed with Mighty Box Games, an independent indie game studio based in Malta, with a collaborative group of visual artists from Malta and Italy.